Claire Waters
I am interested in the transmission of religious teaching in medieval culture, particularly in Latin, French, and English; this means that I'm interested in hagiography, preaching, versified doctrine, Marian miracles, and eschatological fabliaux, among other things. I recently published a book (Translating Clergie) on works in Old French and Anglo-French that treat "basic" religious doctrine and, in doing so, explore the relationship between teacher and learner, and my facing-page edition and translation of Marie de France's Lais came out this year from Broadview Press.
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Books by Claire Waters
This new edition (Broadview, 2018) provides a complete facing-page edition with the original text alongside a new modern English translation. A single manuscript, Harley 978, is used as the copy text. Appendices include contemporary literature on love, animals, and courtly life, as well as a list of textual variants in other manuscripts.
COMMENTS
“Given the changes that have taken place in the discipline over the past 15 years, Claire M. Waters’s new facing-text edition of the lais of Marie de France—the first of its kind—is sure to become a standard for both classroom and research. Waters has made the sound and important decision to base her text on a single manuscript (British Library MS Harley 978), offering more direct access to a canonical medieval text as it was produced and read, rather than as it has been speculatively recreated by modern editors. The translation is fluid and faithful, while the introductory materials lucidly contextualize Marie’s Lais both in their own cultural moment and in contemporary scholarship. This edition complements the lais that Waters translated for the Broadview Anthology of British Literature and extends the ways in which they can be taught in graduate and undergraduate classrooms.” — Geoff Rector, University of Ottawa
“Innovative and elegant, this edition links textual transcription and translation to a digitized manuscript of Marie’s oeuvre, British Library MS Harley 978. Students can use this edition in tandem with the online codex to add historical authenticity to their reading. Claire Waters enriches the medieval context of her lucid translations by including informative appendices ranging from courtly love and society, to animal fables, to historical background, and important literary analogues.” — Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University
Papers by Claire Waters
This new edition (Broadview, 2018) provides a complete facing-page edition with the original text alongside a new modern English translation. A single manuscript, Harley 978, is used as the copy text. Appendices include contemporary literature on love, animals, and courtly life, as well as a list of textual variants in other manuscripts.
COMMENTS
“Given the changes that have taken place in the discipline over the past 15 years, Claire M. Waters’s new facing-text edition of the lais of Marie de France—the first of its kind—is sure to become a standard for both classroom and research. Waters has made the sound and important decision to base her text on a single manuscript (British Library MS Harley 978), offering more direct access to a canonical medieval text as it was produced and read, rather than as it has been speculatively recreated by modern editors. The translation is fluid and faithful, while the introductory materials lucidly contextualize Marie’s Lais both in their own cultural moment and in contemporary scholarship. This edition complements the lais that Waters translated for the Broadview Anthology of British Literature and extends the ways in which they can be taught in graduate and undergraduate classrooms.” — Geoff Rector, University of Ottawa
“Innovative and elegant, this edition links textual transcription and translation to a digitized manuscript of Marie’s oeuvre, British Library MS Harley 978. Students can use this edition in tandem with the online codex to add historical authenticity to their reading. Claire Waters enriches the medieval context of her lucid translations by including informative appendices ranging from courtly love and society, to animal fables, to historical background, and important literary analogues.” — Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University